AIM:To observe the changes of Th17 related cytokines in tears of conjunctivochalasis(CCH)patients with liver-kidney yin deficiency treated with traditional Chinese medicine Qi Jing Mingmu decoction combined with artificial tears.METHODS:A total of 56 CCH patients(56 eyes)with liver-kidney yin deficiency of grade Ⅱ to Ⅲ were collected and randomly divided into treatment group(treated with Qi Jing Mingmu decoction combined with artificial tears)of 26 cases(26 eyes)and control group(treated with pure artificial tears)of 30 cases(30 eyes). The treatment course was 1 mo, and international ocular surface disease index(OSDI), tear film break-up time(BUT), tear meniscus height(TMH)and conjunctival congestion index of the patients were observed before and after treatment. The patients' tears were collected before and after treatment, and Th17 related cytokines in tears were detected using flow cytometry immunofluorescence luminescence method.RESULTS:After treatment, the OSDI, BUT and conjunctival congestion index of CCH patients in the treatment group and control group were significantly improved(all P<0.01). After treatment, the TMH of CCH patients in the treatment group was significantly reduced(P<0.01), while there was no statistically significant difference in TMH of the control group before and after treatment(P=0.41). After treatment, the levels of Th17 related cytokines IL-17A, IL-22, IFN-γ, IL-17F, and IL-1β in tears of CCH patients in the treatment group were significantly reduced after treatment(all P<0.01), and the changes in the treatment group were more significant(all P<0.05). There was no significant difference in the control group before and after treatment(all P>0.05). After treatment, the levels of IL-6 and TNF-α in the tears of both groups of CCH patients decreased compared to those before treatment(both P<0.05), but the changes in the treatment group were more significant(both P<0.01).CONCLUSION:Qi Jing Mingmu decoction combined with artificial tears can effectively improve the ocular surface microenvironment, enhance tear film stability, and inhibit ocular surface inflammation in CCH patients with liver-kidney yin deficiency. This may be related to its reduction in the secretion of Th17 related cytokines in tears.

INTRODUCTION: Outcomes after SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection in patients with heart failure (HF) and ischaemic heart disease (IHD) remain poorly defined. METHOD: In a highly vaccinated cohort of adult Singapore citizens and permanent residents, we used Cox proportional hazards models (adjusted for sociodemographic variables and comorbidities) to compare the risks of Omicron infection, COVID-19- related hospitalisation, and severe COVID-19 between indivi-duals with HF or IHD and matched controls without these conditions. RESULTS: From national databases, we identified 15,426 HF patients matched 1:∼3 to 41,221 controls, and 110,442 IHD patients matched 1:∼2 to 223,843 controls. Over 80% of HF and IHD patients had received at least 3 vaccine doses. During the Omicron-predominant period, both HF and IHD cohorts demonstrated higher adjusted risks of COVID-19 hospitalisation compared with matched controls (HF: adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 1.77, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.65-1.90; IHD: aHR 1.21, 95% CI 1.17-1.26). Among those with at least 1 HF-or IHD-related admission in the prior year, hospitalisation risk was further elevated (HF: aHR 1.27, 95% CI 1.13-1.42; IHD: aHR 1.11, 95% CI 1.01-1.23). Receipt of ≥3 vaccine doses was associated with substantially lower risk of severe COVID-19 versus only 2 doses (HF: aHR 0.35, 95% CI 0.28-0.43; IHD: aHR 0.27, 95% CI 0.23-0.32). A fourth dose conferred additional reductions in infection and adverse outcomes, though CIs for infection overlapped with those for 3 doses. CONCLUSION During Omicron predominance, HF and IHD patients experienced greater risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation and severe COVID-19 versus matched controls. Booster vaccinations attenuated these risks. Individuals with recent HF/IHD admissions should be prioritised for receipt of booster vaccine doses.
Humans ; COVID-19/complications* ; Male ; Heart Failure/complications* ; Myocardial Ischemia/complications* ; Female ; Middle Aged ; Hospitalization/statistics & numerical data* ; Aged ; COVID-19 Vaccines/administration & dosage* ; Singapore/epidemiology* ; SARS-CoV-2 ; Proportional Hazards Models ; Adult ; Case-Control Studies ; Vaccination/statistics & numerical data*

BACKGROUND: Pre-transplant exposure to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) significantly increases the risk of allograft rejection after liver transplantation (LT); however, whether ICI-related rejection leads to increased graft loss remains controversial. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the association between ICI-related allograft rejection and perioperative graft loss. METHODS: This was a retrospective analysis of adult liver transplant recipients with early biopsy-proven T-cell-mediated rejection (TCMR) at Liver Transplantation Center of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital from June 2019 to September 2024. The pathological features, clinical characteristics, and perioperative graft survival were analyzed. RESULTS: Twenty-eight patients who underwent early TCMR between June 2019 and September 2024 were included. Based on pre-LT ICI exposure, recipients were categorized into ICI-related TCMR (irTCMR, n = 12) and conventional TCMR (cTCMR, n = 16) groups. Recipients with irTCMR had a higher median Banff rejection activity index (RAI) (6 vs . 5, P = 0.012) and more aggressive tissue damage and inflammation. Recipients with irTCMR showed higher proportion of treatment resistance, achieving a complete resolution rate of only 8/12 compared to 16/16 for cTCMR. Graft loss occurred in 5/12 of irTCMR recipients within 90 days after LT, with no graft loss in cTCMRs recipients. Cox analysis demonstrated that irTCMR with an ICI washout period of <30 days was an independent risk factor for perioperative graft loss (hazard ratio [HR], 6.540; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.067-40.067, P = 0.042). CONCLUSION IrTCMR is associated with severe pathological features, increased resistance to treatment, and higher graft loss in adult liver transplant recipients.
Humans ; Liver Transplantation/adverse effects* ; Male ; Female ; Middle Aged ; Retrospective Studies ; Graft Rejection/immunology* ; Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors/therapeutic use* ; Adult ; T-Lymphocytes/drug effects* ; Graft Survival/immunology* ; Aged

OBJECTIVE: To systematically evaluated clinical efficacy of Kirschner's needle and elastic intramedullary nail fixation in treating proximal humeral fractures in children by Meta-analysis. METHODS: Literature on the treatment of proximal humeral fractures in children with Kirschler needles and elastic intramedullary nails published on Wanfang, VIP, CNKI and China biology medicine (CBM), PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science databases were searched from the establishment of databases to October, 2023. Literature extraction, management and data entry were performed by Endnote X9 and Excel 2019, and Meta-analysis was conducted by RevMan 5.3 software. The operation time, hospital stay, fracture healing time, shoulder joint extension range of motion, disabilities of arm, shoulder and hand(DASH) questionnaire score, Neer score or Constant-Murley score and complications were compared between two groups. RESULTS: A total of 7 literatures were included, 1 was prospective study, 6 were retrospective cohort study. There were 521 children, 264 children in Kirschner wire group and 257 children in elastic intramedullary nail fixation group. The results of Meta analysis showed operation time[WMD=-12.61, 95%CI(-24.89, -0.33), P=0.04], fracture healing time[WMD=-0.26, 95%CI(-0.49, -0.02), P=0.03], total complication rate [OR=6.83, 95%CI(3.33, 14.01), P<0.001], nail tract infection rate[OR=6.77, 95%CI(1.72, 26.69), P=0.006] and displacement fracture rate[OR=3.57, 95%CI(1.35, 9.44), P=0.01] between two groups had statistically differences(P>0.05), while there were no statistically significant difference in comparison of hospital stay, shoulder joint extension range of motion, DASH, Neer score, Constant-Murley score, and incidence of skin irritation between two groups (P>0.05). CONCLUSION Kirschner's needle internal fixation has a short operation time and simple operation, but it has a higher incidence of complications compared with elastic nail internal fixation technique. In terms of efficacy and safety, elastic intramedullary nail fixation is one of the options for the treatment of proximal humeral fractures in children.
Humans ; Fracture Fixation, Intramedullary/instrumentation* ; Child ; Shoulder Fractures/physiopathology* ; Bone Nails ; Bone Wires ; Male ; Needles ; Female

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a critical clinical condition characterized by rapid renal function decline, with high morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has shown potential effects on mitigating oxidative stress and programmed cell death in AKI models. Scutellaria barbata D. Don (SB) and Scleromitrion diffusum (Willd.) R. J. Wang (SD), a classic TCM herbal pair exhibited anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities. Using advanced chromatographic separation technology, we enriched the effective fractions of water extracts from SB-SD, obtaining self-assembled herbal nanoparticles (SB and SD nanoparticles, SSNPs) rich in flavonoids and terpenoids. These SSNPs demonstrated robust antioxidant properties in vitro and mitigated AKI progression in vivo by activating the nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) signaling pathway. Oral administration of SSNPs in mice resulted in absorption into the bloodstream, formation of a protein corona, reduced macrophage phagocytosis, and enhanced bioavailability and renal targeting. Furthermore, we investigated the self-assembly principle of SSNPs using representative flavonoids and terpenoids. Kinetic studies and in situ transmission electron microscopy (in situ TEM) revealed that these compounds self-assemble via supramolecular forces like hydrogen bonding and π-π interactions, forming stable nanostructures. This study elucidates the renoprotective effects and mechanisms of SB and SD, and provides a novel approach for the development of TCM-based nanomedicines, highlighting the potential of nano-TCM in AKI treatment.

Objective:To screen the main characteristic variables affecting the incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases,and to construct the Bayesian network model of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease incidence risk based on the top 10 characteristic variables,and to provide the reference for predicting the risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease incidence.Methods:From the UK Biobank Database,315 896 participants and related variables were included.The feature selection was performed by categorical boosting(CatBoost)algorithm,and the participants were randomly divided into training set and test set in the ratio of 7∶3.A Bayesian network model was constructed based on the max-min hill-climbing(MMHC)algorithm.Results:The prevalence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in this study was 28.8％.The top 10 variables selected by the CatBoost algorithm were age,body mass index(BMI),low-density lipoprotein cholesterol(LDL-C),total cholesterol(TC),the triglyceride-glucose(TyG)index,family history,apolipoprotein A/B ratio,high-density lipoprotein cholesterol(HDL-C),smoking status,and gender.The area under the receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve(AUC)for the CatBoost training set model was 0.770,and the model accuracy was 0.764;the AUC of validation set model was 0.759 and the model accuracy was 0.763.The clinical efficacy analysis results showed that the threshold range for the training set was 0.06-0.85 and the threshold range for the validation set was 0.09-0.81.The Bayesian network model analysis results indicated that age,gender,smoking status,family history,BMI,and apolipoprotein A/B ratio were directly related to the incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and they were the significant risk factors.TyG index,HDL-C,LDL-C,and TC indirectly affect the risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases through their impact on BMI and apolipoprotein A/B ratio.Conclusion:Controlling BMI,apolipoprotein A/B ratio,and smoking behavior can reduce the incidence risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.The Bayesian network model can be used to predict the risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease incidence.

Chinese medicine (CM) diagnosis intellectualization is one of the hotspots in the research of CM modernization. The traditional CM intelligent diagnosis models transform the CM diagnosis issues into classification issues, however, it is difficult to solve the problems such as excessive or similar categories. With the development of natural language processing techniques, text generation technique has become increasingly mature. In this study, we aimed to establish the CM diagnosis generation model by transforming the CM diagnosis issues into text generation issues. The semantic context characteristic learning capacity was enhanced referring to Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BILSTM) with Transformer as the backbone network. Meanwhile, the CM diagnosis generation model Knowledge Graph Enhanced Transformer (KGET) was established by introducing the knowledge in medical field to enhance the inferential capability. The KGET model was established based on 566 CM case texts, and was compared with the classic text generation models including Long Short-Term Memory sequence-to-sequence (LSTM-seq2seq), Bidirectional and Auto-Regression Transformer (BART), and Chinese Pre-trained Unbalanced Transformer (CPT), so as to analyze the model manifestations. Finally, the ablation experiments were performed to explore the influence of the optimized part on the KGET model. The results of Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU), Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation 1 (ROUGE1), ROUGE2 and Edit distance of KGET model were 45.85, 73.93, 54.59 and 7.12, respectively in this study. Compared with LSTM-seq2seq, BART and CPT models, the KGET model was higher in BLEU, ROUGE1 and ROUGE2 by 6.00-17.09, 1.65-9.39 and 0.51-17.62, respectively, and lower in Edit distance by 0.47-3.21. The ablation experiment results revealed that introduction of BILSTM model and prior knowledge could significantly increase the model performance. Additionally, the manual assessment indicated that the CM diagnosis results of the KGET model used in this study were highly consistent with the practical diagnosis results. In conclusion, text generation technology can be effectively applied to CM diagnostic modeling. It can effectively avoid the problem of poor diagnostic performance caused by excessive and similar categories in traditional CM diagnostic classification models. CM diagnostic text generation technology has broad application prospects in the future.
Humans ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Pattern Recognition, Automated ; Asian People ; Language ; Learning

This article presents a case of acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) in a pregnant woman caused by coronary artery dissection. The 41-year-old patient had undergone cardiac valve surgery at the age of 1 and had no risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, smoking, alcohol use, or a family history of coronary artery disease. At 31 +1 weeks of gestation, she experienced sudden chest pain for 4 hours and was emergently referred to Peking University First Hospital on June 1, 2021. Electrocardiogram revealed ST-segment elevation in leads I, aVL, and V 2 to V 6. Biochemical assays showed elevated levels of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin I and creatine kinase-MB. Echocardiography indicated segmental ventricular wall motion abnormalities (apical) and reduced left ventricular function, confirming the diagnosis of acute anterior wall STEMI. The patient promptly underwent emergency coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention and confirmed coronary artery dissection. Postoperative care included antiplatelet, anticoagulation, and supportive treatment. At 34 +3 weeks of gestation, with the condition of acute anterior wall STEMI being relatively stable, a cesarean section was successfully performed. Regular cardiology follow-ups were scheduled postpartum, and cardiac function was normal in two years after discharge.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the therapeutic efficacy and safety of vonoprazan-based triple therapy in treatment-naive patients with Helicobacter pylori （Hp） infection. METHODS From March 2022 to August 2023， 198 treatment-naive patients with Hp infection treated at the outpatient service of department of gastroenterology in our hospital were assigned to the vonoprazan- based triple therapy group （VAC group， n＝98） and the bismuth-based quadruple therapy group （BQT group， n＝100） using the random number table method. Patients in VAC group were given Vonoprazan fumarate tablets （20 mg） + Amoxicillin capsules （1 g） + Clarithromycin tablets （0.5 g）， all twice daily. Patients in BQT group were given Esomeprazole magnesium enteric-coated tablets （20 mg， twice daily） + Metronidazole tablets （0.4 g， four times daily） + Tetracycline tablets （0.5 g， three times daily） + Bismuth potassium citrate capsules （0.6 g， twice daily）. The treatment course for both groups was 14 days. The Hp eradication rates were compared between the two groups in intention-to-treat （ITT）， modified intention-to-treat （MITT）， and per-protocol （PP） analysis sets， while adverse reaction occurrence and medication compliance of two groups were recorded. RESULTS In the ITT， MITT and PP analyses sets， the Hp eradication rates in VAC group were non-inferior to those in BQT group. The incidences of grades 1-2 nausea， vomiting， and loss of appetite in VAC group were significantly lower than in BQT group， and the proportion of patients with good compliance was significantly higher in VAC group （P＜0.05）. Regardless of whether the body mass index （BMI） ≤25 kg/m2 or ＞25 kg/m2， no statistically significant difference was observed in the Hp eradication rates between the two groups （P＞0.05）. CONCLUSIONS Vonoprazan-based triple therapy is non-inferior to bismuth-based quadruple therapy in the treatment of treatment-naive patients with Hp infection， with higher safety and good patient medication compliance. BMI has no significant impact on the Hp eradication rate.

Objective To investigate the clinical efficacy and surgical experience of modified posterior fossa decompression combined with dural expansion repair in the treatment of type Ⅰ Chiari malformation complicated with syringomyelia.Methods The clinical data of 47 patients with Chiari type Ⅰ malformation complicated with syringomyelia treated by modified posterior fossa decompression combined with dural expansion repair in our hospital were analyzed retrospectively.The changes of posterior cranial fossa volume,cerebellar tonsil and syringomyelia were evaluated by MRI after operation.The scores of Japanese Orthopaedic Association(JOA)were used to evaluate the improvement of neurological function,and the complications were recorded.Results All the 47 patients successfully completed modified posterior fossa decompression combined with dural expansion repair.The main postoperative complications were unilateral limb numbness,incision pain,fever,subcutaneous effusion and so on,all of which were cured after symptomatic treatment.During the follow-up period,the clinical symptoms and neurological function of the patients were improved in varying degrees,and there was no deterioration of neurological function or death cases.The JOA score of the patients 3 months after operation was(15.83±1.31),which was higher than that of(14.66±2.06)before operation,the difference was statistically significant(P<0.05).MRI showed the extent of syringomyelia was reduced or disap-peared 6 after surgery in all 47 patients.Conclusion Modified posterior fossa decompression combined with dural expansion repair for the treatment of type Ⅰ Chiari malformation complicated with syringomyelia can not only ensure the decompression effect,but also increase the support of the contents of the posterior fossa,effectively prevent postoperative local adhesions,and restore the normal physiological circulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the cisterna magnum,which is an effective treatment method for type Ⅰ Chiari malformation complicated with syringomyelia.